A house of awe and dread

At the Charterhouse of Miraflores, near Burgos, a beautiful stone screen spans the church, and over the doorway in it are carved "Hic est domus Dei et porta caeli" – this is the house of God and the gate of heaven.

The words come from the mouth of Jacob, when, having taken a stone for a pillow, he has awoken from the dream that showed him the ladder reaching to heaven (Genesis, 28:17). They are preceded by his exclamation, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. How dreadful if this place!" He was afraid, with a sort of awe.

When Jacob has recovered his power to act, he sets up the stone that was his pillow and pours oil on it. He calls the place Bethel – the House of God.

How does this compare with the way people regard churches today? They often say, and rightly, that a church is the gathering of the people of God, an ecclesia. What difference that makes to its members is another thing, but what about the actual building that the local church has built for itself?

Most towns and villages in England (Scotland, Wales and Ireland being different stories) still have a church that was built hundreds of years ago. When it was consecrated to God, its stones would have been anointed with oil, like Jacob's pillow. It was made Bethel, the House of God.

For Christians, God's house is also Bethlehem, the House of Bread, for it is the place made holy, set aside, for the celebration of the Eucharist. It is the Eucharist that makes the church, the assembly of the people of God. It is the bread that has come down from heaven, as Jacob saw the angels ascending and descending on the ladder that reached from heaven to earth, the porta caeli. This bread is Emmanuel – God with Us. The Lord is in this place.

The church remains the House of God even when the Eucharist is not being celebrated. It is difficult to know what we mean when we say that a place and the stones that make it up are holy. Of course they are set aside for God, so profane use is the breaking of a sacred covenant with God.

There is a memorable passage in Laurie Lee's book A Rose for Winter, about fighting with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. His unit is billeted in a church one night, and the author boldly sleeps on the altar. It was something he regretted ever after.

If holiness is something not to be contravened, is it also something that rubs off, as it were? It is hard to see how, if the words of Jesus are to be taken seriously, about it being not externals but those bad things within a man, in his heart, that defile him. Contrariwise, goodness depends not on externals, but the heart.

Still, we are creatures made not only of flesh but also of the associations that have made the world in which we find ourselves: the history and culture of our people. If we are lucky enough to live where people like us have lived for a long time, we inherit the culture they made. It only takes a few years for a church building to acquire the discernible character of being a house of prayer.

Naturally, attachment to human traditions – to armorial hatchments, regimental banners, even to bells and flower arrangements – can engender Pharisaism, that is, love of externals while the heart remains corrupt. Disgust with such Pharisaism drove hot prophets such as the 17th-century Quaker George Fox to despise church buildings as "steeple houses".

But the Church is not unaware of the danger, and reconciles the dead stones of the church building and the living stones of the Christians who make up its people. One of the prayers for the anniversary of the dedication of a church says: "Here you build the spiritual temple which we are."

Each Christian is a living stone, a portable temple of the Holy Spirit. It is at church that they build up the Body of Christ which they mystically constitute. Analogically the altar is Jesus's body too, which is why people bow to it, and the priest kisses it as he approaches to celebrate the Eucharist.